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Windows 7: Hard drive constantly read/writing

Park your machine like you like, get back to it when you can and see how it likes being clean.

I remember a time when my Dad (bless his soul), couldn't understand where I was coming from, but he left me room to grow. Parents have a way of knowing....

Your welcome, take your time. It sounds like you might be able to D/L Process Monitor now and let it run to see if it can find anything.

Oh, by the way I'm including a file tellin' about how to do that Multiple Quotes thing, hope it makes sense. I have Libre Office, but you should still be able to open it...

I scanned it for malware before I shipped, and zipped it with 7's zipper so all you should have to do is right click on it and "Extract All", but I wouldn't blame you if you checked it for malware first, there's an old sayin'....
"I know your my brother, but I'm still goin' to check".

See if that calms your machine down, but I still want you to download/install and run process monitor in step #7 and take a snip of that.

The newest link to Process Monitor worked fine. It is 'showing' over 2,000,000 events--but I have no clue what I am looking at or looking for. Should I even be online while it is running? A lot of the processes seemed to involve Internet Explorer. You mentioned taking a snip of it--but I don't know what to take a snip of?

It depends if you need to be online or not. When do you notice the increased HDD activity?

A snip would be counter-productive, instead:
If online run Process Monitor (PM) while online and save the report/file as .csv
If idling run PM while offline and nothing else open, save file as .csv
In either case .zip the .csv file before uploading.

OK Anak, I let the Process Monitor run for hours while I was outside working. I had closed the other windows and I don't know if it was ever going to quit. It seemed to stay at 82% for a long, long time even though the number of events continued to go up. When I finally needed the computer, I stopped the Monitor and saved it--over 8 million events and a 815 MB logfile. It zipped to 55 MB--but I'm not sure what the size limitation is for uploading to the forum. I'm unclear what the Process Monitor was doing and why it never seemed to complete its scan. It looked like it would continue to find more events as long as it was running. Anyway, do you still want the file even though it is incomplete and really large?

Scroll down to the next to last entry for CM1630 user's manual(English) click on the Global link, and save .zip file to convenient location (Desktop?), I scanned my copy for malware, MBAM didn't find any. I did not use the Global (DLM) because Asus wanted me to also D/L a manager that I did not want, and you take a risk with D/L'ing malware with P2P.

Anak,
I downloaded the CM1630 manual and read Chapter 6. Could you explain a little bit about what happens with System Recovery? Will I have to re-install all my software again? Microsoft Office, games, A/V, etc? I'm trying to determine how much effort it's going to require after the Recovery so I can decide the best time to schedule it.

Anak,
I downloaded the CM1630 manual and read Chapter 6. Could you explain a little bit about what happens with System Recovery? Will I have to re-install all my software again? Microsoft Office, games, A/V, etc? I'm trying to determine how much effort it's going to require after the Recovery so I can decide the best time to schedule it.

Yes.

I don't know who purchased or used the machine first, but it sounds like your son did in post #19:

Quote: Originally Posted by rcan1015

I just got this ASUS system a couple months ago from my son (when he decided to go for a Mac)

So you wouldn't be able to recall what it was like when your son first fired it up.
The Recovery Partition contains all the original software that Asus installed including the Operating System (OS).

If you go to: https://www.asus.com/Desktops/Essent...specifications and scroll to the bottom you will see Software, and Utilities that are included in the recovery.
Some of this software is bloatware and you really don't need it if you already use something different.
Some of the utilities may not be needed.

What you will need to do is save any personal data you have created on it, and any programs you installed that need product keys, use Belarc and or Speecy to retrieve them.
If you have disks for the programs that's good.
If you downloaded (D/L) any, I hope you saved them in a special D/L folder, copy them also, but scan them for malware before you reinstall especially if you got anything from your son, you wouldn't want to reload anything bad. You would have to reload Malwarebytes again to do that.

What a System Recovery will do is first clean the HDD by formatting the HDD which means erasing everything on the HDD.

Then it will rebuild your HDD to its original condition, including the recovery drive.

It should look like the sample picture on page 6-16 in the manual.

Time varies, but should take less than 45minutes from start to finish.

EDIT:
That 45minutes is just for the recovery, figure maybe 15 to 30minutes extra for any additional programs.

Quote: Originally Posted by rcan1015

Anak,
Is there any security or privacy issues in having that Process Monitor logfile posted? Should access to it be disabled since you have reviewed it?
Thanks,
Richard

There are some SIDs, and registry IDs, but these are usually unique to each machine, the only way to disable the log is to remove it.

To give you peace of mind go back to post #36 and click on edit, then the Go Advanced button, you will be taken to the reply editor.

Scroll down to where you attach files, you will see a Manage Attachments button, click on that.
When the next box opens you will see your file Logfile.zip with a remove button to the right, click on that give it a few seconds and it should be gone.

If you go back to your post you will see [ATTACH]******[/ATTACH], if you want to clean up your post cut everything from the far left to far right bracket otherwise it will show in the saved post.

Please post back any further questions you may have before starting, and any after you've done the recovery i.e. removing bloatware, adding antivirus/malware products, anything.

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